Pinkerton, Baloney and Geewizz

The Caramel Tree Readers Level 4 series offers delicious leveled readers for children aged 7 to 9. The diverse original stories have a word count of approximately 2,000 words and Lexile measures between 400L to 700L. The stories in this series vary with narrative in first or third person, and they have increased character dialogue, which allows students to develop character studies.
 
Eric is puzzled by the stories he hears from the new boy in class, Max, who says he lives on a bus and has the most unusual pets. Eric wants to be friends with Max, but soon, the whole class thinks Max is strange and there is nothing Eric can do to stop the teasing and bullying, or is there?